Mentors work with offenders to establish new lives

For more information on Boulder County's FOCUS re-entry mentoring program, or to apply to be a mentor, visit focusreentry.org.

Imagine having to start your life over with nothing but the clothes on your back, a bus ticket in your pocket and a conviction on your record. That's the situation facing many of the people who emerge from the Boulder County Jail -- and the reason so many soon find themselves quickly back in jail.

But one local program pairs volunteers with former inmates to support them as they try to get back on their feet. The FOCUS (Facilitating Offenders Seeking Uplifting Situations) program is about to enter its eighth year of existence, but started off as just one field mentor in April 2005.

"When we first began we had a really tough time, the jail didn't have the mindset at that time of incorporating these things," said Tania Leontov, the executive director of FOCUS.

Boulder County Sheriff's Sgt. Tim Oliveira, the support services supervisor at the Boulder County Jail, said that while inmates are in the jail they can get the type of treatment and resources they need. But too often, he said, without the structure and support of the jail, even former inmates with the best intentions can fall off the wagon.

"It's easy when they are incarcerated," Oliveira said. "But when they get out, that's when the challenges start to pile up."

Leontov said most of the challenges start with finding housing and employment, but that can be hard with a criminal record.

"People have reservations about the offender population," Leontov said. "They need a lot of support getting their feet on the ground, and that can be hard with leaky shoes and a foot of snow on the ground."

And that is where FOCUS comes in. The program pairs former inmate with same-gender mentors who spend between one to two years providing support for those former inmates, whether that be rides to appointments, help writing resumes and finding housing or simply a new friend.

Leontov said one of the biggest reasons former inmates re-offend is they go back to the same friends and bad influences that got them in jail in the first place.

"One of the major problems when an offender gets out is they are still friends with the people they drank with or did drugs with, but a whole new life is very lonely and challenging for anybody," she said. "We try to help them connect wherever that is possible."

'Exactly where I need to be'

Jennifer Edmiston was a 15-year drug addict who did stints in jail for everything from possession to theft and DUI. When she was booked into jail in 2007, she knew she needed to change.

"I was just tired," she said. "I had wanted to change for a really, really long time, but I didn't have the tools. I just wanted to get sober and have a home and do normal things."

Then she saw a presentation from FOCUS at the Boulder County Jail, and when she got out in 2008, she had found her path back to that life.

"I don't even know how or why," she said. "Something in my heart told me that was exactly where I need to be and that was the program I needed to be in."

But it wasn't easy for Edmiston, and she said a task as simple as getting a Colorado ID was a challenge.

"It takes money to get an ID, and if you're trying to do everything on the up-and-up, you can't go steal the $16 you need to get it," she said.

But with the help of her mentor, Edmiston was able to turn her life around. She is now a supervisor at a call center, bought a place of her own, was reunited with her kids and finally has the life that eluded her so many times before.

"I go to work, I come home, I check in with the kids, fix dinner, go to the grocery store," she said. "I have my own home that I can go to. I know it's safe and I can close the door and it's just me and my kids and I know that nobody else can take that away from me."

There are many success stories like Edmiston's because of the FOCUS program. Oliveira said the typical recidivism rate -- when an inmate goes back to jail within a year or being released -- is around 65 percent. For offenders in the FOCUS program, that rate is at 17 percent.

"That in and of itself shows the value of a mentorship," he said.

After starting with one mentor in 2005, the program now has 25 to 30 mentors in the field at a time, all of them volunteers who go through 17 hours of training.

"They're from every aspect of the community," Leontov said. "There are King Soopers managers, retired folks, CU professors, people who work at NCAR. They just come from everywhere."

'People that show up for you'

Edmiston is also now one of those mentors, having graduated from the program herself. She said in her mind, the key is simply being there for support, something she said her mentor -- who she still considers a close friend -- was always there to provide for her.

"She helped me get to appointments, and it was just non-judgmental support," Edmiston said. "It's the power of their presence, someone being there with you. Not doing the work for you, but just being with you.

"It's these people that show up for you everyday."

Added Leontov, "For the people we work with, they have a chance. A chance to create a life, to become part of the community. You have no idea how sidelined you feel when you get out of jail."

Oliveira said the program benefits the community as well as the former inmates by reducing the strain they put on the city's resources once they are back on their feet.

"They then have the ability to be less dependent on the community," he said. " I think the community benefits greatly from that, and I don't know if you can put a dollar value on that."

Edmiston knows that no recidivism statistics or dollar values can come close to what she has gotten out of the program.

"I owe my life to this program," she said. "I'm forever grateful. The FOCUS staff is my family."